Extra Special Good Friday Post About My Lack Of Religion

In honor of Passover and Easter (and because I recently read a book about it), I'd like to talk about something near and dear to my heart- religion and the lack thereof.

As someone raised Catholic, I became a nonbeliever in the fairly dramatic way, with a fair amount of angst. I know several friends who were simply raised secular. I remember, actually, what really tipped the scales for me. I probably would have given up religion anyway, but for me the tipping point came when I was reading Isaac Asimov's robot books. Yes, that's right. Science fiction killed my Catholicism.

Asimov was a committed rationalist, and in his books he explained clearly and persuasively why robots were had just as much "personhood" as people did. I believed him. I agreed that a sufficiently complex artificial system could be just as much a person as a human being. Some kind of metaphysical "soul" was not necessary for its function, and, by implication, our function. Nature worked fine without supernature intervening.

There was more to it than that, of course. I'd read the Bible, and decided that God was an asshole. As a young teenager, I couldn't reconcile the vile acts of the Old Testament with any idea of a loving god. They seemed more like the actions of Zeus of Quatzalcoatl than the deity that was praised at mass. Moreover, I didn't always agree with what Jesus had to say in the New Testament. It was Jesus who introduced the idea of a hell, and I found the idea that any human person could be permanently (eternally!) irreedeemable to be deeply distasteful. Such a permanent lack of forgiveness, I thought, was petty at best. On top of that, god seemed too fantastic an idea to ever fully except. I never really believed in Santa Claus, and I think I felt the same way about god.

There I was, about thirteen years old, and not finding legitimacy for something that was so important to my family. God wasn't real, and religion was an artifact of history.

Realizing all this was painful, mainly because of what it reflected about my parents and teachers. I had been made to go to Catholic school as a child, and attend mass every sunday. In sixth grade, I attended public school, but my father had me attend a weekly religious education class and become an altar boy. What's more, my homeroom teacher in middle school attended the same church as my family, so Catholic authority figures still loomed large for me.

I had come to my own conclusion that there was probably no god, and kept it to myself for years. I didn't want a confrontation with my parents, teachers, or priest. As a teenager, I dutifully went through the rite of Confirmation, though the name I chose, Luke, owes more to my love of Star Wars than the gospel chronicler. I needed a saint's name that would still be meaningful to me, and Luke was it.

Years later, after University, I finally told my father that I consider myself an agnostic (a label that I remain unsatisfied with). He didn't believe me. "You're Catholic," he said, "you'll come back." My father continued to tell me to go to Church and pray, and I told him that I don't do those things. "Yes you do," he said. That was always hard to take. Hearing my father engage in what seemed to be an act of philosophical weakness didn't cease to be painful.

Since my "conversion," if you will, I've often thought about how to be a good person without being religious. This is something important to me because I feel like I'm a better person because I've had to decide things for myself. My moral decisions, I've found, have not been based on fear of an angry god. They have been based on something else, some love of humanity, and I want to know what that is. There is nothing compelling me to be good to my neighbors. I am good to them because of what I am and what they are, not because of outside, deific, pressures.

In addition, there is a widespread belief in America that religion is the proper basis for morality. When Mitt Romney was talking about his Mormonism last year and asking for religious tolerance and understanding, I had a great deal of sympathy for him. Of course he may practice whatever religious system he chooses, even if I think it's a rather silly one. He lost me, though, when he lashed out against secularists in the same speech. He asked for tolerance, but would not give it to me. That that hypocrisy is acceptable in the United States is deeply disturbing. More historical than a black president, I think, will be our first out-and-proud secular president.

Delving into secular morality is what led me to minor in philosophy in university, and I've read a number of books on the subject of why there is no god, and what that means. Most recently I read God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, and found it to be a curious book. I agreed with just about everything that Hitchens had to say, and found him sympathetic, yet the book was still extremely annoying.

Hitchens spends most of the book slamming religion, mostly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He never says anything that I find all that disagreeable, but his tone is one of a man who is simply ranting and complaining about things. Yes, the Bible contains some awful, immoral things, yes, religious leaders have been responsible for a lot of history's horrors, yes modern science has disproved a lot of it anyway. Yes, yes, yes. I'd heard all of that before.

I kind of wondered who Hitchens' intended audience was. Certainly not me. I wasn't learning anything all that new from what he had to say. I couldn't imagine a religious person being all that persuaded by the book, though. If anything, I thought of theists being so pissed-off by his ranting tone that they would become even more galvanized in their beliefs. Reading the book, I was also reminded of the humorlessness of Richard Dawkins, a man I admire immensely, yet who, I think, has a rather dour public persona.

This is a problem, I think, that is intrinsic in the cause of non-belief. By its nature, it is reactive. People like Hitchens and Dawkins are the sort of personalities who go on and on about what they don't believe, what they think is foolish and worthy of scorn. They are defined by their public opposition to something, rather than by their advocacy of something positive. There are numerous other philosophers and political writers who don't believe in god, but for many of them it's merely something that they don't think about. Most nonbelievers are fairly casual about it, and don't make a zealous project of their lack of faith.

Sam Harris, whose book The End of Faith, I quite liked, says that he does not like being called an atheist. The term, he says, defines someone by their nonbelief in something. It is a purely negative, and therefore largely unappealing term. It is also, he says, sort of absurd. Calling someone an atheist is similar to calling someone an anti-astrologer or anti-alchemist. They might disbelieve aspects of supernature, but that is a single intellectual detail that does not define their philosophical outlook. As I mentioned earlier, I dislike the term "agnostic." I have similar reasons, though I use it. I choose the term "agnostic" as opposed to "atheist," by the way, as a sort of technicality. For all intents and purposes, I am an atheist. There is almost certainly no god, and even if there was one I do not think it would deserve the worship of intelligent entities. However, I believe that a deity, by it's very nature, would be uncomprehendable to human perception and cognition. By definition, it would be impossible to confirm or deny it's existence. Neither I, nor any other human, could make an entirely conclusive statement about the nature of a hypothetical god.

Religion, I think, will always be with us. I am not so optomistic that I think that humanity will ever come to a grand enlightenment with regard to supernatural ideas. There will always be some proportion of the population who sincerly believe in gods, angels, and an afterlife. We cannot crush it, as Hitchens and Dawkins seem to suggest. Instead, I think that the best we can ask for, and something we really ought to ask for, is a place at the table in America and the world. What I hope for is that people like me will be considered just as moral, good, and philosophically legitimate as any theist. I know that lots of people think that already, and that we'll get to that point eventually.

Right now, though, it's particularly poignant. I'm going over to my family's house on Easter, and I know that I will have to defend my (lack of) religion. I will be asked to pray and attend church, and I will decline to do both. Given the expansive nature of my father, there will be conversations, maybe contentious ones, about the nature of the resurrection and all that. The man who raised me will belittle my beliefs, and say that they are not my own, that they are a result of going to a secular high school and university. It will not be the last time we've had this argument, and we will each leave unconvinced by the other.